Breaking the duopoly, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) officially names Mislatel consortium, composed of Udenna Corporation, Chelsea Holdings, and China Telecom, as the “New Major Player” (NMP) in the public telecommunications market.

According to the post on the Department of Information and Technology website, Mislatel is the one that expressed the “Highest Committed Level of Service (HCLoS) bid,” promising to deliver 27 Mbps of minimum average broadband speed on its first year before zooming to 55 Mbps in the next four years. The NMP has also devoted to service 84.01 percent of the population before the end of its five-year commitment period.

In Hootsuite and We Are Social’s “The State of the Internet in Q4 2018″ report published recently, six countries (Singapore, Iceland, Hong Kong, Romania, South Korea, and the United States) are now offering an average of 100 Mbps in fixed broadband speeds.

The announcement said that Mislatel consortium “passed the Document Verification Phase conducted by the NMP Selection Committee that merited them for the final confirmation from the NTC En Banc.”

Two other aspirants, Sear Telecom group (LCS Group, TierOne Communications, Fujian Torch, Miller LTE, and SEATel) and PT&T are filing their own motions of reconsideration after the Selection Committee disqualified them from the bidding having failed to submit the required participation security and Certification of Technical Capability, respectively. That left Mislatel as the sole bidder that also passed the evaluation process.

The NMP has 90 days to submit required documents stated including its roll-out plan for the entire commitment period to proceed to the processing of its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity.

The NTC can forfeit the NMP’s performance security of around P25 billion and recall the awarded frequencies should it found a breach in any of its commitments.

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